Joyce Wilderman talks about arriving in America as a GI bride in 1946.

Recollections life as a WAAF and a GI bride.

Joyce Wilderman was a librarian but when war broke out she volunteered for factory work. Sent to a large factory in Cheltenham and assigned the nightshift, she soon discovered she hated it and recalls, ‘the bigger they got the worse it got’. She suffered constant laryngitis and was let go on medical grounds. Joyce wanted to join the Women’s Land Army but her father refused to allow it so she ended up joining the WAAF. She worked in signals and although she enjoyed the work she says ‘it was tough’. Even carrying her kit bag was a problem as she was small. It was whilst based at Bury St Edmonds in 1942 that she met her future husband, an American soldier. They were married in 1943 and Joyce made her own wedding dress out of parachute silk.

Joyce was a GI bride and in January 1946 she set sail on the Queen Mary along with many other British women who had married American soldiers, to start a new life in America. Her daughter, Margaret had her first birthday on board.